The reactions and solutions in “Handling delays on Internal Projects due to skill gaps” help address bringing in consultants and focus on the timing being right-sized and with very clear defined lines. This actually goes back a long ways, to the initial western world village-sized projects. Now urban center feats are well-documented large enterprise projects efforts and were done typically with a fair-amount of dictatorship. But agrarian or travel towns did not have such authority, resources. Smaller kingdoms completely relied on advancing barracks, granaries, resource production, city walls, and maintaining people in the kingdom to advance –both for the security of the city, but being honest, the advancement of the monarchy.

There are actually several books on “Medieval Project Management” (i.e. here) that goes into how kingdom projects were managed – both fair and beloved kingdoms and ruthless or poor kingdoms.

Here is an example, which illustrates one thing – not much has changed in the staff management aspects:

A well-liked king has a goal to build a moat and bigger drawbridge to allow both larger carts to come in and out of the town, while allowing for protection against marauders. The townspeople have never built this before and certainly not to this complexity. The king knows of another town where it has been done before and suggests to bring in this help.

The townspeople say “we can do it”. The king knows loyalty is a prime asset, and completing a project, with townspeople at work creates just that. The townspeople, unfortunately, struggle with designing to the new scale and has spent more than anticipated, and nothing is yet built nor designed to work.

The king, recalling loyalty is key, doubles-down, but attempts to buy back risk by saying he will bring an advisor in. The townspeople once again say “we can do it ourselves”. The king takes this risk and approves the project without delay. Delays continue, and once again time and money from the coffers pass.

The king noting they are very far behind, and other towns now have competing sized bridges and moats, now says lets bring in an advisor and a designer who recently finished these projects, but you can still be proud by building the bridge. The townspeople say “we can do it, we just need more time, we almost have it figured out, we need more townspeople”. The king now irritated, knowing loyalty is a major asset, once again reluctantly delays, as now half the town is involved in the project.

Unfortunately, a year has gone by without a new bridge. The marketplace is stagnant, other towns are growing, jobs in the town are now stagnant, and the king knows he can wait no longer. Now, the townspeople are angry they are overworked as they have to work more to make enough.

The king final says, I have now paid the others to take over the project, we cannot wait any longer. The king could resort to heavy penalties, but with half the town, and buried deep, any swift hard actions could result in revolt. Instead, he issues a stern decree, citing their failure, and he has now turned the project over, and the costs are now quadrupled (original costs doubled by failure, plus a double-cost rush order from outsiders and the king must now provide extra protection and oversight for the outsiders to just get started)

The townspeople did not say “well, he gave us a chance” and we were gainfully employed. The townspeople were not thankful for the work on an incomplete job. Instead, the idea of a new marketplace is at an all-time low (though all other towns are flourishing with the new marketplace). The townspeople spread rumors of any sign of delays, weakness, or possible conspiracy or even sabotage. The king must spend time mending the townspeople’s now unruly position.

The project is finished, quadruple costs, double the time, and unfortunately, economically, the shift has occurred. The townspeople decide to uproot and go to the next town anyhow as they heard about how their marketplace is bustling with new jobs and goods as they were able to complete the new wider drawbridge that this king couldn’t and the kingdom goes into dark times trying to recover.

Not much has changed from medieval times in corporate cultures. Balancing the culture health of the company is a big deal. The perception that happy employees produce 1.5-5x as much as unhappy employs is slightly true. But it is not about happiness. Note the story talks about the townspeople wanting to accomplish a big project and would be proud, and the kingdom would expand, and townspeople would be loyal and thankful. Happiness was not in there.

But, the townspeople also had a lack of vision. The king gave a major contract to an untrained, demanding union with a sales pitch of the low price of loyalty, and technically we have done it before. Without a measuring device to objectively allow pulling the contract back, the contract modifications continued, and the king was now all-in.

The king can take the risk on such a contract award – The king did not ask for an initial task to prove their merit. The king did not treat the award of the project to his own people like the award of a performance-based contract to outsiders.

Conclusion: Any project you budget for, award it and set the measures for success whether it is done by your staff or outsider consulting team contract.

All projects require milestones (another medieval term continued from Roman times), clear objectives to guide quality levels and deliverables for scope and some semblance of budget and resource management (whether it is time and materials with a not to exceed, or fixed-time, fixed-price phases).

The similarities are the same – the project failure was not the townspeople. Just like the project success is on the king, or the executive, the decisions on project staffing are on the executive. Take that measured initial risk, but if metrics are showing clear, you need to adjust, using the agreed measure failure as the guidance to approve the switch.

If the answer is “of course”, then why haven’t we done so already?

It is a simple concept, but one without an implementation strategy. Twenty years after the establishment of Circular A-16 and FGDC metadata content standards, we are still looking at metadata from a dataset centric point of view -that is for “what has been” and not for “what will be”. Knowing what is coming and when it is coming enables one to plan.

The model can be shifted to the “what will be” perspective, if we adopt a system’s driven data lifecycle perspective. Which would mean we look at Data Predictability and Crowdsourcing.

It may seem ironic, in the age of crowd sourcing, to argue for predictable data lifecycle releases of pedigreed information and seemingly deny the power of the crowd. But the fact remains, the civilian government entities in the US systematically collect and produce untold volumes of geospatial information (raster, vector, geo-code able attributes) through many systems including earth observation systems, mission programs using human capital, business IT systems, regulatory mandates, funding processes and cooperative agreements between multiple agencies and all levels of government. The governments in the US are enormous geospatial data aggregators but much of this work is accomplished in systems that owners and operators view as special but not “spatial”.

An artificial boundary or perception has been created that geospatial data is different than other types of data and by extension so are the supporting systems.

There remain challenges with data resolution, geometry types and attribution etc., but more importantly there is a management challenge here. All of these data aggregation systems have or could have a predictable data lifecycle accompanied by publishing schedules and processing authority metadata. Subsequently, the crowd and geospatial communities could use its digital muscle to complement these systems resources if that is their desire and all government programs would be informed by having predictable data resources.

What is required is communicating the system’s outputs, owner and timetables.

Once a data baseline is established, the geospatial users and crowd could determine the most valuable content gaps and use their resources more effectively; in essence, creating an expanded and informed community. To date, looking for geospatial information is more akin to an archaeological discovery process than searching for a book at the library.

What to do?

Not to downplay the significance of the geospatial and subject matter experts publishing value added datasets and metadata into clearinghouses and catalogs, but we would stand to gain much more by determining which finite number of systems aggregate and produce the geospatial data and creating a predictable publishing calendar.

In the current environment of limited resources, Xentity seeks to support efforts such as the FGDC, data.gov, and other National Geospatial Data Assets and OMB to help shift the focus on these primary sources of information that enable the community of use and organize the community of supply. This model would include publishing milestones from both past and futures that could be used to evaluate mission and geospatial end user requirements, allow for crowd sourcing to contribute and simplify searching for quality data.

Our Concepts and Approach starts with the executive sponsor.

We want to connect the line of sight from drivers to goals through products and services, process, roles, systems of information and technology and down through the bottom line. We can start with a short rapid implementation planning workshop to validate, discover, level-set, educate, and start your transformation effort on the right foot. Or we can use ITIL continuous improvement approach as part of supporting your operations.

Our methodology and training focuses on transformation leadership that can help improve customer effectiveness and efficiency. We do this by proactively managing risk and delivering results through strong, facilitated execution or increase relevancy and economics of existing or new product lines and services. In working with customers, Xentity provides integrated oversight of the parts that need to be connected, understood, and communicated prior to significant investment. This approach enables Xentity to understand value opportunities and risk, determine mitigation strategies, and support customer awareness on how to realize recommendations. Once decisions and investments have been made, Xentity utilizes strong communication and project management skills to facilitate change. The methodology work we developed has been recognized and adopted as Federal Government best practices by the U.S. OMB.

This approach helps design, execute, and showcase major change through proven methods. We approach information and technology change from within the mission out to the enterprise. This is different. And it has been an adopted concept and method by the Federal Government and has become popular in the commercial space. Take on the right amount of change, a focus area at a time. This is what we know. It is what we do and have been doing since 2001.

Either as a team creating deliverables, embedded consultants, or staff augmentation,our transformation designers, architects, analysts managers, management consultants, and creatives specialize in change.

Our transformation approach and experts will help you buy-back the risk.

Upfront, we can help you design and architect your transformation concept of operations, develop the full architecture and requirements before you go to the street using our collaborative business transformation approach.

We can tactically engage to support and manage your project – either existing project and team back on track or new project and team going on right foot.

We then can design and execute your outreach efforts and even produce short movies to help you brag about your change.

And for program support, and continuous improvement, we can provide your high-tech, geospatial, and science operations, analysis, and management with true subject-matter familiarity and staffing solutions.

We want to connect the line of sight from drivers to goals through products and services, process, roles, systems of information and technology and down through the bottom line. We can start with a short rapid implementation planning workshop to validate, discover, level-set, educate, and start your transformation effort on the right foot. Or we can use ITIL continuous improvement approach as part of supporting your operations. Read more about our Services on how we can design change with you or augment your current architecture, management, and communication staffing needs.

Address gaps early on. Buy back the risk.

Get the right definition and design for embracing the right innovation and disruption concepts.

Coordinate and integrate your change to mediate and anticipate risks and challenges.

Recover from current project design and management issues.

Showcase and engage your community with your new or changed solution the way it deserves.

Bring on someone that can help you with this transformation lifecycle

Our Services:

Buy-Back Risk of your transformation failing

Improve transformation requirements and concepts

Set path for most successful project implementation

Focus on Information Lifecycle challenges

Address Solutions for Disruptions in tech, business, and cultural shifts

Increase the likelihood of achieving your metrics and goals

Help accelerate time-to-market,

Increase quality and relevance of your change effort.

Can include training and workshop to transition approaches to keep focus on continuous improvement

Tell the world your transformation story!

If this story below is you, these are services you need

Information Technology used to be hidden in your organization. Likely for Financials and other enterprise resource management or MIS. Ran as a cost-center under the CFO or COO. Now its core to your business. Workforce costs are being replaced on the delivery or customer service ends by internet provided capabilities. Sales force automation, marketing campaigning, devices, storefronts, support desks, mission critical services – you name it.

Moreso, Now, data is an asset and your business is done online or through B2B information exchange. Its in the boardroom to the factory floor to the customer interface. You need to manage the information supply chain, use for management decisions, analytics, and in many cases your business is completely reliant on information and technology as your service.

So you invest capital funds or operation funds deferrals in projects, development, infrastructure, contracts, etc.. in hopes of gaining that competitive edge or cost savings. This introduces new ways of doing business. And Change. Which of course, no one likes change except the change visionary.

The canary in the cave signals start to come in. The project the costs keep creeping up. Requirements weren`t there. Traditional cost-center procurement and development models were used to bid or build. You created a business case, but most of the time its ignored. A plan is used as the law, instead of the guide, and was wrong as business agility and the technology offerings changed before you even started. And an architecture or operating concept is either non-existent, incomplete, or build on old patterns.

As a result, the outcomes are not there, and delays, over-runs, re-designs are bringing forward nightmare scenarios. It gets risky. Before you know it, project costs are beyond up, a new technology is out, outcomes are missed and you and your stakeholders and stockholders are very skeptical. Worse yet, public relations and internal chatter is causing a culture of loss confidence which may leak public forcing an premature launch.

Something has to give.

You are at risk of joining the statistic that only 25% of IT projects succeed, 25% fail, and rest are partial wins/losses (Source: KPMG).

This is where we come in – either before the nightmare occurs, or in the midst. We can operate as a project team, embedded consultants, or SWAT team.

The following GovTech article attempts to say yes. It may be an article you find somewhat interesting. Or, if you have been burned by Enterprise Architecture in the past like many, you might find it trite. Or, you might be able to riff on it. Here’s what are some 101 points one can get out of it:

EA lacks support because people don’t understand what it is

Using the “building a home from a blueprint” analogy can help (to a degree)

Explaining EA terminology (framework, model, blueprint) can help

EA is about the business (or mission), not IT; It’s about getting IT to align with the business (or mission)

For EA, the federal government is leading (ahead of states and other jurisdictions)

That said, in a brainstorm, virtual whiteboard session, and here are some of our own riffing:

How far can you go with the “building a home from a blueprint” analogy before it breaks down?

For example, how detailed does a blueprint have to be before you can start building?

Does the blueprint have to have the landscaping plan?

Or, does it just have to have the core, structural details?

When you’re building a house according to blueprint, how are changes handled mid-construction?

If the building owner walks through the roughly-framed house and notices the natural lighting patterns and wants to add a set of windows and move a closet, the blueprint enables you to manage the change, understand the impacts, account for the impacts. What’s the EA analogy, if any?

How agile and iterative can EA be?

How quickly can you get from EA to implementation to demonstrating results?

This gets to another obstacle to organizations embracing EA: it takes too long to architect the entire enterprise before the enterprise begins to experience the benefits.

Sometimes the organization realizes zero benefits because there’s no transition to implementation phase.

In any case, how exhaustive/comprehensive does the EA need to be before the organization can reasonably move out on some implementation?

As we’ve seen, starting some transformation in parallel to completing the full EA blueprint and roadmap can begin to improve the organization and move it in the right direction.

What are the boundaries, conditions for moving into incremental change?

And what are the risks of moving in the wrong direction before completing an exhaustive EA?

For example, if early analysis reveals that an organization is behaving like a products company but that it’s mission, purpose and objectives mean that it’s really a services organization, can you start implementing change to address that?

Is it still appropriate to architect just a “segment” at a time and rollout implementation then move onto the next segment?

Can can organization views of EA go beyond aligning IT with the business/mission?

For example, are some EA re-alignments purely process-based?

Our comments of course were discussed in how our approach to core architecture concepts apply, so the intent of the blog was not as greenfield as it may seem, but capture some of how the now near 20 year somewhat mainstream practice may need to evolve further to adjust to agility that came about post-internet, utility commodity models (aka cloud), and moving data from ERP backoffice systems to the frontline of mission, scientific, and direct consumer service.